Butch Bellah - Speaker | Trainer | Author

Sales Numbers: 7 You Should Know

While I don’t necessarily subscribe to the theory sales is simply a “numbers game”, I do believe there are sales numbers every salesperson must know. To use a sports analogy, this is a quarterback’s completion percentage, yards per completion and so forth. Or, if you’re a baseball fan; batting average, on-base percentage, etc.

In order to know where you need to focus your improvement, you must first know where you’re starting. Then and only then can you improve. As, stated here before: you can manage what you can measure.

So, without further ado, here are 7 sales numbers you should know:

Sales Numbers You Should Know

# of calls: Whether you’re “knocking on doors” or working via the telephone, you need to know how many calls you’re making. These are calls on people you are trying to get an appointment with–we’re talking about new business here. How many calls are you making in a day, week or whatever call cycle you want to measure. I only count ones where you get to talk to someone, too. I want to know how many opportunities you had to get an appointment.

# of appointments: Speaking of appointments (though we’ve learned not to use that word), how many did you set? This is your initial visit with the prospect as a result of your calls. These generally are meetings where you’re doing a needs analysis and finding where you can be of service to your potential customer.

# of presentations: Farther into the sales process, how many presentations are you making? This comes after the needs analysis, determined how to solve the prospect’s problems and made a presentation of your offerings. How many did you get to make in this cycle?

# of sales: The simplest one of all. How many sales did you make? Not dollar volume or units, but how many new customers did you generate from your efforts?

% of calls to appointments: Now that we have the above data, we can determine your percentage of calls to appointments. Are you making 10 calls to get 1 appointment? 20? If it takes you ten calls to set one appointment, you’re percentage is 10%

% of presentations to sales: Along the same lines, how many presentations did you make to get a sale? This is normally known as your “closing” percentage. What is it? (You’d be surprised at how many people truly don’t know)

% of calls to sales: This is the most critical of all: your percentage of calls to sales. We started the process with calls and ended with sales. How many calls did it take you to make one sale? 20? 40? 100? Figure this number as soon as you have the appropriate data.

Once you have this, you can quickly see where you need to focus your efforts. Do you need to improve the number of calls you make? Are you needing to get better at getting an appointment or turning that into a presentation or ultimately finalizing the sale?

Where is YOUR pain point? You do a needs analysis for your customer so you know where to help them, this is a self analysis to know where you need help. You may be doing great and just need to make more calls. But, most likely there’s a point in the process that needs improvement–and if all you are judging are the final results. You don’t have enough data.